In a field north of Belan Church in County Kildare, something invisible from the ground becomes legible from the air. Aerial photography taken in June 2018 via Google Earth revealed a cropmark suggesting a large enclosure roughly 150 metres in diameter, and possibly trivallate, meaning it was defined by three concentric rings of banks or ditches rather than the single boundary more commonly associated with early ecclesiastical sites.

Cropmarks form when buried earthworks affect the moisture and nutrients available to surface vegetation, causing subtle but detectable differences in crop colour and growth height. They are most visible during dry summers, when stress on the plants above a buried ditch or bank becomes pronounced enough to read from altitude. What the Belan imagery appears to show is an early Christian monastic or ecclesiastical enclosure of considerable scale, sitting in close relationship with the existing church and graveyard. Trivallate enclosures are relatively rare in the Irish record, and their multiple boundaries are generally interpreted as indicating a site of some significance, whether spiritual, territorial, or both. The enclosure at Belan has not, on the basis of available information, been subject to ground investigation, so its full character and date remain open questions.